She Lies Twisted Read Online Free

earrings. Another one of his thrift store finds. Boyd was good at thrifting, genius even. I paused and scooped another soggy mouthful up with my spoon. Boyd and I had opened this box of cereal together less than two weeks ago. Now he was gone and it was still here glaring at me from the porcelain china that was too fine for cereal but that I used because we had nothing else.
    I let the tears wash down my face and drip into the bowl. I didn't notice and I didn't care. All that mattered was finding out what Boyd's dad had done with him. I'd made up my mind to go back to the trailer park and see that he got a proper sending off, one way or another. He would've done the same for me.
    I washed my bowl and dried it in a daze, eyes glazed over, looking at but not seeing the yellow roses swaying in the fall breeze. As much as the thought of going back to the place where I'd found Boyd dead pained me, I didn't feel that I had any other choice. When my sister had died, my life had been put on pause, like I couldn't move forward until she did. When I'd seen her coffin descend into the wet ground, I'd taken a deep breath and everything and everyone around me had begun to move again. I didn't stop hurting, I'd never stop hurting, but I was able to move on, to pretend that maybe one day I'd be okay again. I'd been able to meet and befriend Boyd. Maybe if I did the same with him, I could breathe again.
    “ Marilyn?” A voice behind me asked. I dropped the bowl into the porcelain sink and spun around. My eyes were wide and wary; my hands shook. But it was just my Grandmother. “Marilyn, darling,” she said, shuffling into the kitchen in pink house shoes and teal foam curlers. “You know that china's for guests.” I sighed and ignored her, snatching my backpack from the floor. When she was like this, nothing in the world could convince her that I wasn't my mother.
    “ I'm going out to find Boyd,” I snapped, pausing in the ornate doorway. The heavy trim weighed down on my spirit like a curse. “You remember Boyd, don't you?” I continued, eyes narrowing. He had always tried to talk to her. She had always remembered him though she had thought he was my mother's boyfriend rather than her granddaughter's friend.
    “ You should wear dresses more often, Marilyn,” Grandma Willa said, grabbing handfuls of the broken china, blood whispering down her sun wrinkled skin and splattering against the white of the sink. She picked up a sponge and rubbed at the shards, humming some old song under her breath. “You're a woman now, you should try and act like one.” I huffed angrily and left her there to bleed.
    Once I had escaped the yard and Anita's wary glances, I pulled out my music and picked the saddest, most depressing songs I could find. I arranged them into a playlist in alphabetical order and cried my way to the trailer park. I hoped that Boyd's worthless father hadn't done something stupid like leave his body to the county to deal with. He'd done that to Boyd's mother, or so he'd bragged. I twisted the fabric of my sweater in anger. Boyd's dad was the lowest of the low. Whatever he'd done, it couldn't have been good. This wasn't going to be easy. If I'd had my way, I would've bought him a coffin. A big white one with a colorful shot of the Virgin Mary across the top of it. I would've ordered red roses and stuffed them in glass vases and lit a thousand candles and had a funeral for two. He would've been buried next to my grandfather in the old cemetery across the street and down the hill from the school. As things sat, the best I could hope for was that Boyd would spend the rest of his unlife in a place of my choosing, somewhere where his spirit could be free.
    When I reached the trailer park, I found my body seizing with anguish. My knees locked up and I came to a stop just inside the front gate. The toes of my boots refused to cross over the line between the cracked pavement and the trampled grass. Trampled by cops, trampled by